


White Hot

by KatieComma



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Gen, Inspired by Music, Undercover AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 10:50:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16016369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatieComma/pseuds/KatieComma
Summary: AU - Jack Dalton left the army to become an arms dealer, but he's crossed the wrong bad guy and now he's being hunted down. Worried it's his last day on earth, he makes one last phone call.Inspired by the song White Hot by Red Rider





	White Hot

Jack Dalton stood looking out at the ocean from the cover of the jungle and wondered how he wasn’t dead already. His blood felt like it was boiling inside his body he was so damn hot. Each breath he took in was like fire, and his lips were cracked from the lack of water and excessive heat.

And he was alone.

Far as he could tell he was just over the border into Somalia, but without any working equipment there was no way to be sure. The sat phone had been the last active tech he had and it had died during his last call over 24 hours before. The last call he’d ever make, and it had gone to voicemail.

A sudden burst of gunfire peppered the afternoon. It was getting closer. A gurgled scream cut the air behind him to the right, and was silenced before it could finish. Sounded like Ty. Dead now. 

Once the bad guys had caught up to Jack and his crew, they’d scattered for better odds. Now they were being hunted down like game, and it didn’t sound like they were doing much better than defenceless animals.

Another burst of shots, from behind him on the left this time. The sounds seemed quieter than they normally would, muffled by the stifling heat, and soft jungle leaves. Screaming floated to him on the air again, but this time it wasn’t cut short. Matty had been left to suffer.

Jack was surrounded. Bad guys on the left, bad guys on the right, the only way open to him was toward the ocean, out from the cover of the trees.

Walking out into the ocean and letting it pull him under didn’t seem like such a bad way to die. The Jack Dalton he’d been in the past would have never had such a stupid thought. He would have held his ground to the end; dug in his heels and taken out as many of the bad guys as he could. The difference between those two Jacks was that he had become one of the bad guys, and didn’t feel like he had righteousness on his side anymore. So he broke from the jungle and started walking toward the ocean, side arm gripped tightly in his gun hand; not that the three bullets he had left would do him much good.

The past few years had just flown by. Recruited straight from the army as an undercover operative for the CIA, and then into the bad life he’d always fought against. His cover had been the hardest to swallow. In order to make it believable he’d been dishonourably discharged for selling weapons to the enemy. Tried in military court and sentenced, the CIA had set up an escape for him. After that he had the reputation he needed to get in with the arms dealers they were trying to take down. An operation he’d been told should take months but had stretched out to years.

That last day of active duty, when they’d taken him into custody, he’d remember that day forever. It was his EOD tech’s last day in the sandbox, and they’d just come back from patrol. He’d made it conditional that they wait until Angus MacGyver’s tour was over and done before they set up his cover. The kid wouldn’t have lasted a day without him. Jack and Mac pulled up to camp and started for the barracks when Military Police seized Jack and dragged him in for interrogation, spouting off the charges as they pulled him along. He almost hadn’t looked up, but he’d wanted one last glance at that nerdy little tech who’d become like a brother to him. And that last look broke Jack’s heart. As Mac listened to the charges being shouted out, the tech had closed his eyes and his face had morphed into a mixture of anger and hurt. Jack remembered wanting nothing more than to call out and tell him it wasn’t true, it was all made up, but duty called, and for once his gut and his duty weren’t on the same page.

Jack stumbled over a stone, jarring him back to reality. The heat was causing him to lose concentration and let his mind wander. Something an ex-Delta Force wouldn’t let happen under normal circumstances. But baking like a fried egg on some seashore in Somalia wasn’t really normal circumstances.

A small shelf of rock offered a little cover and he ducked behind it, falling to sit down on the hard stone. He stripped the pack from his back and opened it up. The thing was riddled with bullet holes and there was nothing usable left inside. His canteen had been hit, saving his life, but not for long since it was now empty, and there was no other drinkable water in sight. The sound of the cascading ocean waves drew his attention out to sea and he watched the water roil and bubble against the shore, thinking how absurd it was that he was surrounded by water but dying of thirst. He chuckled a little at that thought and the smile caused his lips to crack open, spilling coppery blood into his mouth. He sucked it in and swallowed it, afraid to lose even that little bit of moisture. Not that it mattered as he leaned forward to dig through the remains of the pack and watched sweat pour like rain from his forehead, spattering the ground.

Rain. What he wouldn’t give for a rain cloud. It reminded him of that day in the sandbox when a rainstorm had swept into the camp and kept them locked indoors for a day. Most guys played cards or read books, but not Mac. The nerdy little EOD tech had brought a box of paperclips with him. Twisting them up into shapes with his Swiss Army Knife was the only hobby that seemed to keep him distracted. They’d annoyed Jack at first; bunks, tables, the floor even, littered with little sparkling silver images. But after a while Jack started to appreciate the intricate nature of some of the paperclip sculptures. And how the kid always seemed to make something pertaining to a conversation he’d overheard. They were never random little images. Johnson talked about his son playing little league back home, and Mac made a ball cap; Halverson talked about building an add on for his house when he got back, and Mac made a hammer. On and on he made little trinkets. Sometimes he’d give them to the guys, leave them on their pillows or just toss them onto the table while they were playing cards, a lot of the time he’d just set them down next to him and grab another paperclip to start again. After a while Jack started picking them up and keeping them as good luck charms, stuffing one into his pocket before they headed out on each mission.

“Dalton!” A vicious voice screamed from somewhere behind him. Harper Hayes. She’d caught up to him after all, no doubt intending to deliver the final blow herself.

His CIA handler had told him from the beginning: “The one person you don’t want to cross in this whole thing is Harper Hayes. Ex CIA Special Forces, she holds a grudge like no one else. If she ever finds out you crossed her, you’re dead.”

So Jack probably shouldn’t have seduced her for information and then sold her a shipment of faulty rifles. Wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t tested those rifles on sight and found them missing key firing components. Jack and his men had barely gotten out alive. They’d headed up the coast from Tanzania, through Kenya, and when they thought they were in the clear, Jack snuck away to call his CIA handler, only to find that she and her entire team were dead. 

Harper Hayes really didn’t screw around. Jack was on his own. No one knew that he was CIA or undercover. Everyone that had known he was innocent was dead. Jack was a criminal for real now. If he tried to go back to his real life he would be put into military prison. And the last call he’d made, after calling the CIA, to the last person in the world who might believe he was innocent, had gone to voicemail just before his phone had died.

So he had nothing to lose.

“Jack Dalton!” She called out again. “Your team is all dead! Well, except for Matty, it’s going to take him a while to bleed out. No one’s coming to save you!”

Jack stayed behind cover, but pitched his voice over the rock and back toward the jungle. “You’re just mad cause I didn’t make an honest woman of ya,” he called as loud as his water-deprived vocal cords would let him. 

An awful cackle came in response. “I was always honest with you Jack,” Harper’s voice echoed back. “I’m a terrible person and I kill the people who fuck me over. I was up front about that!”

“Fair enough!” Jack called back. He was too hot and tired and drained to think of anything clever to say.

She was getting close enough now that he could hear the scrabbling of her feet over the rocky terrain.

It wasn’t how Jack Dalton wanted to go out; hiding behind a rock, sweating to death, shot like a fish in a barrel. There were worse ways. Him and Mac had talked about those ways in the sandbox. In a place where there were so many ways to die they’d discussed almost all of them: Gunshots, exploding, torture at the hands of the enemy, starvation, the list went on and on. Even talking about the bad stuff was easy with that kid.

So when he got near the end all he wanted in the world was to talk to Mac again. Just hear his voice on the phone, tell him goodbye, and let him know that he wasn’t a traitor. That had been his last call. He’d known it would be, he could read a battery gauge as well as the next guy. Enough juice left for one call on his sat phone and he’d dialled Angus MacGyver. The only phone number, other than the family ranch, that he had stored up in his noggin. Jack had kept track of the kid after he’d left the army; Mac had started working at a think tank and put that big brain of his to use solving big problems, world changing problems.

Jack had listened to the ringing buzz until the voicemail had picked up. “You’ve reached MacGyver, leave a message.” Jack had waited for the beep and left a rambling message, detailing his situation, his coordinates, the fact that he’d never been a traitor. Just when he was getting to the end of what he wanted to say, just before he could say that he’d missed his best friend these long couple years, the battery died. That was just over 24 hours ago. There was some kind of hope in his chest that Mac had been able to contact the army and somehow convince them to come to the rescue, but now he was at the end, Harper closing in, and he knew he was stuck. This was it.

Jack sat back and tried to pretend he was at a resort somewhere, sipping fancy cocktails with umbrellas sticking out of them, watching the ocean. He attempted to ignore the fact that he felt like he was burning up from the inside out, his skin peeling and red from the glare of the sun. Resisted the urge to lick at his cracked lips. Leaned back against the hard rock behind him and did his best to imagine that it was a cushioned chair. He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable, hoping that the sun would take him first, fry him like an egg right there before Harper could get hold of him.

The scratching of her boots on the rocks came closer, and closer. Jack gripped his gun in hand, holding it tight against his thigh in the hopes she wouldn’t see it when she spotted him.

“Found him!” A male voice called just to Jack’s left.

Jack cracked his eye open and saw a merc climbing over the rocks close by, a rifle in hand. Jack pulled his gun up and cracked off a shot. Miss. His tired and weathered body wasn’t quite aiming with his usual accuracy. Second shot hit the shoulder, third shot put the man down.

Harper was close behind and came around the other side, gun trained on him.

Jack didn’t care if she shot him, he pulled his gun up and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked impotently, bullets expended.

“Aw hell,” he said, tossing the gun toward the water.

Harper approached, looking well watered and comfortable in her tac gear. Obviously she hadn’t been trekking trough the jungle on foot for almost two days straight with no supplies like Jack had.

“Jack Dalton,” she said softly, the way she’d said his name when they’d spent a few intimate nights together. “You really screwed this one up.” Her voice was full of amusement. “I’m surprised you didn’t have a way out of this one. From your reputation I thought you were better than this.”

Jack felt his cocky humour rising to the surface again. “You know Harper, I expected more of you too,” he said, scanning her up and down with his eyes, “in more ways than one.”

Before he could get out another word she stepped close and clocked him with her gun. Jack’s lips split wide open and pumped blood all down his chin.

“I know you well enough not to listen to you Dalton,” she hissed. “You’re a liar, and not a very good one. CIA, right? Ward was your handler? Until I made a call.”

Jack wanted to scramble to his feet and lunge at her. Becca Ward had a family. Two kids.

“Just kill me already,” Jack said, resigned to his death.

“Oh Jack, I think you know me better than that,” she crouched low to meet his eyes. “And I want you to remember, when I’m poking holes in you and making you die slowly, that Ward died because of you. Her whole team is dead _because of you_.”

Jack gritted his teeth and spat his blood at her. The crimson spittle caught her on the cheek but she didn’t even flinch, just wore the red stain like warpaint.

“Jimmy! Catherine! Haul him outta here. Let’s get on the road,” Harper yelled toward the jungle.

Jack waited for hardened uncaring hands to pick him up. Each moment he was left there baking he just got hotter and hotter. His body felt like it was cooking, boiling alive. He’d never been so hot in his whole life. If he’d had the energy he would have run and jumped right into the ocean.

A sound filled his ears, soft at first and then louder and louder. He was sure he was hallucinating. It sounded like copter blades. The sound came closer, increasing in volume.

“What the hell is this?” Harper’s voice screeched over the noise.

Gunfire sounded, and Jack heard bullets ricochet off the rocks around him, but he didn’t have the strength or energy to open his eyes. He hoped one of those bullets would just cut right through his brain and end the whole thing.

Panicked footsteps. Harper’s angry screaming. Gunfire, so much gunfire. It was like being back in the sandbox again.

The day they’d been stuck in that firefight, him and Mac, just the two of them. There was so much gunfire that they’d both been yelling to talk to each other afterward, their ears dulled by the sounds.

“Jack!” Mac’s voice called out. They’d found a crawlspace under a house and hidden there until the rest of the forces had passed them by. Mac had rigged up the door with an IED in case anyone found them, but they’d been safe.

“Hey Jack!” Mac had told him that if they didn’t get out, he wanted Jack to know how grateful he was that he’d stayed on after his discharge. Jack knew that already.

Jack was pulled back to the present by hands on his arms. Harper’s goons had come to take him away.

“Jack, can you hear me?” Mac’s voice. Hallucinating for sure, the past and the present merging into one.

But the hands on his arms were gentle, and they weren’t pulling him roughly to his feet like he expected.

“Jack, hold on, ok?” Mac’s voice again. “We’re going to get you into the helicopter and take you home.”

Jack used the rest of the energy in his body to force his eyes open.

Mac was crouched down next to him, where Harper had been last. No, Mac was even closer, hands on Jack’s arms. He looked out of place, like a dream; pale skin, and fair hair lit golden by the sun. His collared shirt looked clean and new. It was definitely the opposite of how Jack felt, left out to roast in the sun.

“Hey Mac,” Jack’s croaked out. “You get my message?”

Mac smiled, but there was a bit of sadness in his eyes. “Yeah Jack, I got your message.”

Then Jack couldn’t keep it in anymore, and despite the fact that his body wanted to hoard all of the water it could, he let a few tears drip out of his eyes. “I missed you buddy.”

“I missed you too man.”

The rest of it faded away as Jack relaxed into the comfort of safety. They were careful when they strapped him down and put him into the helicopter, but it hurt like nothing else. And when he was safely stowed like cargo, they took off and headed back home, Mac by his side the whole trip like no time had passed at all.

**Author's Note:**

> White Hot by Red Rider - lyrics
> 
> Waiting by the shoreline  
> In Somalia for your reply  
> I need you to come see me  
> That's no lie  
> The guns are getting closer  
> The sweat pours like the dew  
> That fell from the trees in Tripoli  
> In the spring
> 
> I'm white hot  
> I can't take it anymore  
> I'm white hot  
> By the Somalian shore  
> White hot  
> Yes, I'm burning to the core  
> I need rain
> 
> We're cast out from the jungle  
> With no rations, one canteen  
> For selling faulty rifles  
> To the thieves in Tanzania  
> Adventure and misfortune  
> Nothing wagered, nothing gained  
> I have wandered through the desert  
> Found the ocean, not the rain
> 
> I can remember the nights by The Strand in Tripoli  
> We were so much younger then  
> Had you and my poetry to protect me  
> We were so much cooler then  
> I need rain
> 
> I'm white hot  
> I can't take it anymore  
> I'm white hot  
> By the Somalian shore  
> I'm white hot  
> Yes, I'm burning to the core  
> I need rain, I need rain, I need rain
> 
> I can remember the nights by the sea in Tripoli  
> We were so much bolder then  
> Had you and my poetry to protect me  
> We were both soldiers then  
> Bolder then, colder then  
> I need rain, I need rain, I need rain  
> White hot  
> White hot...  
> Water


End file.
